


A little rough around the edges

by TheBrideOfTheWind



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Murphy gets a haircut, Post-Canon, a little fluff, and has a heart to heart with Bellamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-08 12:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11081280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBrideOfTheWind/pseuds/TheBrideOfTheWind
Summary: Murphy's hair is getting too long on the Ark and there's nobody there to cut it...or Bellamy and Murphy make up over a haircut





	A little rough around the edges

**Author's Note:**

> This is just something I wanted to write after the finale. Hope you like it!

Trusting other people has never been as easy for him as for others, and even harder after the all the things that happened on the ground. It was a part of his nature – and Emori's, too – to doubt people. To question other people's motives, then pandering to their needs, was a part of and the foundation of their survival as well. Trust was a dangerous, treacherous thing, but they weren't going to survive five years in space without trusting those people. Both him and Emori knew that. 

“John, you need to cut it. It's getting too long,” Emori says with a smirk, looking at Raven for support, who watches him with squinted eyes and then nods her approval.

He didn't expect anything else. The two have gotten close, with Raven even taking Emori under her wings as a sort of protégé, her being the only one other than Monty that's really interested in tech and actually talented and motivated to help her with it. Monty and Harper cheer at them from the background while Echo remains silent, brooding over whatever she's brooding over again, and Bellamy watches them all with a fond look on his face.

Murphy's still wary of Echo – talk about the pot calling the kettle black – though she seems to follow Bellamy like a lost puppy. Or maybe that's the reason he's still wary of her. While Raven and Emori are off to their engineering adventures, and Monty and Harper stay in their room most of the time, he's stuck hanging with those two or wandering around the Ark on his own. The last month he nearly inspected the entire station, at least the parts that are accessible, finding out more about his birth place than in the 16 years he has lived there. From time to time, he even takes a quick look at the algae farm, although Monty forbade him to touch anything.

“You said you couldn't cut it, so what's the point?” Murphy moans, giving Emori a challenging glance. She shrugs at him, but the smirk never leaves her mouth. He knows that kind of smirk; it usually means she's planning some elaborate scheme to reach whatever endgame she has at the moment.

“I can do it,” Bellamy offers out of the blue, and everyone snaps their head to peer at him and Murphy. “I used to cut my sister's hair all the time when she was younger.”

Murphy looks to the floor, ponders over it for a second. The thought of being at Bellamy's mercy, him being so close to him, touching him, makes his skin crawl. And not entirely in a pleasant way. When he looks up he catches Emori still smirking from the corner of his eye, then his eyes meet Bellamy's, who's smiling, too, brown eyes warm and sincere.

“OK,” he nods after another glance at Emori, gulping down his unease concerning the situation. “But don't cut me.”

“I'll try to,” Bellamy chuckles, and the others join in, their laughter filling the whole room. It's a nice noise, for once. After all the struggle, after all the exertions, after all the losses, they somehow have found a little moment of peace for once, although he hates being caged in space again.

Bellamy looks for a scissor while he already settles into a chair in his and Emori's room, his mind racing. Bellamy's still not fully gained back his trust, not after the last time he choked him, although he – more than anyone else – can understand his motives. If it had just been him, maybe he would have let him out, maybe he would have risked his own life. But it's not just him anymore. He has someone else to look out for, someone else to protect. His thoughts are interrupted when Bellamy enters the room, a rusty pair of scissors in his hands.

“Wow, that looks neat. If you _accidentally_ stab me with that thing, at least you and the others will have a little more air to breathe.”

“I'm not going to stab you with anything,” Bellamy grimaces and takes a cautious step closer to where he's sitting with his hands folded in his lap, his fingers twitching nervously.

“Remember the last time you were that close to me with a sharp object?” Murphy asks, thinking about the both of them chained up and the way he flinched when Bellamy approached him, not knowing if he would cut him free or cut his throat. “Fun times.”

Following his words, Bellamy's face hardens. “Is it going to be like this all the time?” he asks, taking another hesitant step towards him. 

“What's wrong with it? Can't two men just reminiscence about the time they had together? About trust and betrayal? And condemnation? Cause that's what it's coming down to, isn't it?”

Bellamy stays silent, his eyes flickering to Murphy's, his whole body tensing visibly.

“Why did you volunteer to cut my hair? I know for sure Raven used to cut Finn's, too, he told me. So tell me, why?”

“I wanted to talk to you. You've been avoiding me ever since we came back on the Ark.”

He was right. They stayed mostly silent on their way to rescue Monty which could have been mostly due to the time pressure and the tense situation. But after everything was over, he still didn't feel the need to talk to him, going as far as to think about asking Emori to come with him for the haircut. He only decided not to go through with it, because it would have looked ridiculous. 

“Last time I talked to you privately, you told me once again that I haven't changed, that I only care about myself.” He laughs bitterly. “To think about...for a fleeting moment, I even thought about setting you free. But surprise! You got free anyway, getting Emori and me kicked out. And I'm the selfish one.” 

“Murphy, I –”

“You know what she told me?” he whispers, his voice nearly breaking. “She told me, it felt nice to be safe for a moment. So thank you for that.”

“I wanted to tell you I'm sorry,” Bellamy says. “That's why I wanted to talk to you.”

“You still think you're better than me, though, don't you?” Murphy asks with as much acid as he can muster, his long contained anger finally boiling over. “The great Bellamy Blake, protector of widows and orphans. Our true hero.” 

“That's not how it is. You carried the oxygen scrubber on your own and then came back to get Monty; you helped Raven. If I'm a hero, you're as much a hero as I am.”

“You know what Bellamy? I'm no hero. Hell, I never wanted to be a hero. I just wanted to survive.”

“I just wanted to protect my sister,” Bellamy mutters, and all of a sudden his face fills with so much sadness that Murphy feels the need to avert his gaze. Although he's good at reading people, it's not always easy for him to connect with their emotions. Empathy is a slippery slope if you're trying to stay alive. But it's always been easier for him to connect with Bellamy's feelings, with his anger, with his pain.

“You did what you could. She's safe, Bellamy. You don't need to protect her anymore.”

“I don't know. Maybe I'll never find out what happened to her. Maybe I'll die here in space, without having talked to her again. Without knowing if she's still alive…” Bellamy trails off, covering his face with his hands, a small sob leaving his mouth.

Murphy reaches out his hand to touch him, slow and careful, as if he's afraid to shy him away. As if he's afraid he might break. When Bellamy looks up at him, he stiffens, his hand falling at his side again, like an alien element.

“Listen, I'm not the best with this kind of stuff, but **we** need you now. As much as it hurts me saying this, but you're the one that holds us together? The one with the motivational speeches? Don't leave me hanging there man, you know I couldn't cheer somebody up if my life depended on it. Or maybe only then.”

A small broken laugh escapes Bellamy's lips, and he straightens himself, mouthing a thank you.

Murphy nods slowly, then gestures at his still long hair: “Mind if we get over with this?”

He's still reluctant about Bellamy touching him, and the first time he senses his fingertips on his skin, it takes some effort to restrain himself from flinching. But Bellamy's surprisingly gentle, his fingers wandering over his head and hair with ease, as if it's the only thing he's ever done. It brings back old memories, yellowed and forgotten, of his father cutting his hair when he was a boy, both of them bursting into laughter whenever he pretended to cut into one of his ears or tickled him with a tuft of his hair.

It's not exactly the same situation, though, and whenever Bellamy's fingers graze his sensitive skin, instead of making him laugh, it sends a shiver down his spine. When Emori touches him, it's reassuring, soothing, comforting. When Bellamy touches him, it's overwhelming, infuriating, exhausting.

So he's kind of glad when he finally stops and takes a step back to examine his own work. A few minutes pass, with Bellamy standing behind him, not saying a word, until a terrible suspicion forms in Murphy's mind. 

“You didn't –,” he says, turning his head to glower at Bellamy, who's wearing a remorseful look on his face. 

“I may have...um...there's a little...um...a little hole at the back of your head. But trust me, nobody will notice.”

“You didn't –,” he repeats, raising out of his seat abruptly and finding himself face to face with Bellamy. It's the first time he's that close to him again since Polis, and he can't help to notice that his face has hardened, that even in the short time that has passed his features have become sharper, more defined. He looks older, more mature. There's a harshness about him he doesn't remember, and he asks himself if that's what the ground did to them, if that's what surviving did to them. If he looks the same. When he shakes this thought off, Bellamy's still studying him, eyes opaque and unreadable.

There's always been something heavy, something dark and angry, and all-consuming between them, an intensity that he couldn't quite understand, that he couldn't quite explain. And at this moment, he thinks that Bellamy can feel it, too. He freezes in his place, searching for something to say, to cut through the silence that's only filled with their breathing and the frantic hammering of his own heartbeat. Then, with a sharp intake of breath, Bellamy takes another step back and the moment is gone.

“Thank you,” Murphy says and forces a smile, touching the back of his head warily not only to look for further damage but also to distract himself.

“I told you, nobody will notice,” Bellamy says with one last smirk, ruffling his hair before he walks out of the room. He's not sure if the close proximity to Bellamy with literally no possibility to escape him is the best or the worst thing that has ever happened to him. What he's sure about is it's already driving him over the edge.

Bellamy takes the scissors with him, but leaves back a pile of brunette strands, scattered all over the floor. Emori finds him there, sitting on the chair again, a tuft of brown hair in his hand. 

“You've been with Raven again?” He asks, when he notices her oil-smeared fingers. She nods, brimming with mirth. He thinks he hasn't seen her this happy since the last time they were on her boat.

“You're jealous?”

“Naw,” he shakes his head, and Emori laughs, high and clear. “So, why did you send me with him?” He wants to know, and his voice shakes only the tiniest bit, but of course, she registers it. 

“Maybe _I_ needed something to be jealous about?” She teases him and plants a quick kiss on his forehead. One of her braids brushes his nose and he suppresses a giggle. It’s lightsome with her, comfortable. There’s no hiding, no pretending, and most of the tension seems to fall off the longer he is together with her. 

“I needed you two to get back on course,” she says, before she grabs his hand and he feels himself becoming calmer immediately. “You need to trust each other again,” she continues, and he can't help but smile about her wisdom, about the way she always seems to know what he needs. “And I see the way you look at him.”

“I'm trying not to look at him these days,” he scoffs, and Emori watches him with bright eyes. Sometimes he hates how observant she is, always lurking, always creeping up on people. He doesn't tell her about the hollowness he feels whenever he looks at him. He doesn't tell her about the burning rage in his chest whenever he speaks to him. He doesn't tell her about the dull ache whenever he touches him. But he has a feeling he doesn't have to.

 

On his way to his usual Ark excursion, he stops in front of one the windows to have a look at the still dying earth, when he feels a small breath of air and someone steps up to him. 

“So, you're keeping tabs on me now?” he asks without having to check who it is, his hand involuntarily reaching out to touch the hair at the back of his head again. 

“Should I?” Bellamy replies with a grin and Murphy thinks about red seatbelts, about pointed weapons and sharp objects. About choke holds and handcuffs. “I can braid them in the future, if you like.”

“Who says that I'll let you touch my hair again, after your overall disappointing performance this time?” Murphy moans, his hand still in his own hair, when Bellamy draws it away gently to have a look himself. 

“Let me think about it,” he murmurs. “Your other option is letting Raven cut it, and believe me, she's going to give you a buzzcut, and not by accident.” 

It's getting increasingly harder for him to concentrate with Bellamy touching him again, but it's not as unwelcome, and at least he doesn't feel the need to pull away instantly. He feels a little less anger and repulsion this time, too. Nonetheless, his lips curl into a forced smile and he sighs internally the moment Bellamy finally lets go of him.

“We'll see,” Murphy says, stealing one last glance at freckles and dark curls, before he leaves Bellamy behind and starts his daily walking routine without giving him any chance to follow. He's not yet ready for this. Not now.

Trust was a dangerous, treacherous thing, but maybe one day, they'll get there again.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a lot lighter but turned out like this...thanks for reading anyways!
> 
> On a side note, we need more Ark murphamy, so...where you all at?


End file.
